Wednesday, 7 January 2009

ECB website fails in crisis management

The ECB has a few problems today. It's lost the team England team coach and captain who was also the best player. In appointing the successor they are turning to someone without the unequivocal support of his colleagues and in splitting the captaincy, going back on their publicly stated preference for the same captain of the Test and one day squads.

This is what the BBC Sport website said:

It's a difficult situation - made worse by their corporate website.

I heard that Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores had left their posts at about 10.30 on News 24. The news was broken by Mihir Bose. It wasn't clear whether they had left or been sacked and whether the captain could be reinstated by the new coach or whether he would continue playing for England.

So I logged onto the website, ecb.co.uk. The homepage had a picture and profile of Kevin Pietersen but no news of anyone leaving:

I thought it might be slow to update so 15 minutes later tried again. This error message came up - I presume due to volume of hits:

Because it wasn't that they were updating it. Now, 6 hours later, the homepage and news page remain unchanged.

Why the corporate website so important

The corporate website is so important because it's the only opportunity you have to put your position - all of it - directly to your core constituency. And as the downtime demonstrated, lots of people look to the original source.

The ECB may have bigger issues to deal with today. But if it can't communicate its position confidently in a crisis, it will lose the support of important stakeholders.